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You might have thought Big Data could change the world - curing cancer, maybe, that kind of thing - but let's be honest: It's all just about Mario Kart, really. Not too long ago, Joyent released Manta, a web-facing object store used to "crunch Big Data in the cloud," according to Joyent's website, and Manta found an unexpected use:

We like to say that we built Manta to solve all kinds of problems from
log analysis to video transcoding, but the reality is now clear: Manta
exists to compute analytics on Mario Kart 64 sessions.

The result is an interesting look at a small group of players' gaming habits. They can determine their most commonly played tracks, how often players change their place, how often a player drops from first place to fourth in a five-second period, and so on. This is all compiled in a web client called Kartyltics, which is run within Manta to process the gameplay videos.

Check out this presentation on Kartylitics to see what Mario Kart can teach us about Big Data:

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